TECHNICAL LITERATURE IN THE UNDERGRADUATE CURRICULUM' JAMES WATTERS Bradford Durfee College of Technology, Fall River, Massachusetts
A COURSE in technical literature, not as a seminar for superior students hut as a teaching device for all chemistry majors, has a great deal to offer in the undergraduate curriculum. Such a course has been offered a t Bradford Durfee College for the past twelve or fifteen years, under circumstances which are not unique, so that our experience may be of some interest to ~ t h e r s . ~ Because our library is quite limited, the course has been based largely on journals of which a fairly extensive, wide-ranging file could he built up quickly at minimum cost: Chemical and Engineering News, the JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION, the Scientific American, and a few others. Originally this limitation of source material appeared to be a crippling difliculty; but it has turned out to be an advantage: highly technical material, specialized and immediate, about investigations still in progress, does not, by itself, do a good enough job for most students. More realistic and accurate insight into the nature of research and other scientific activities comes from literature with a measure of built-in perspective: reviews or interpretations in mhich the individual items have already undergone some evaluation and editorial arrangement, or reports of research done long enough ago so that the work can be viewed as a whole and some of its implications and consequences perceived. Articles of this type are found in abundance in the journals mentioned. We have supplemented them with a relatively small proa or ti on of the immediate. detailed material customarv 'Presented ss a pert of the Symposium on New Ideas in the Four-Year Chemistd Curriculum before the Division of Chemicd Education s t the 132nd Meeting of the American Chemical Society, New York, September, 1957. I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. L. B. Coomhs, originator of this course, and Dr. Elimbeth Adams, our colleague for one semester in 1949,who clearly reeagnieed its value.
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in seminars. I t should be emphasized that this course does not replace, but rather complements, a seminar. The course in technical literature is open to seniors; it meets twice a week, fifty minutes a session, during two semesters, and carries one hour credit per semester. The work of the class consists almost entirely of oral reports, by students, on material assigned by the instructor. Assignments have to be such that oral presentation is possible, to good advantage, to the audience at hand. The effectiveness depends on both speaker and audience; but some subjects are too complex or too abstruse to be grasped immediately in this may even if one is taking notes. Both the skill of the speaker and the comprehension of the audience increase as the year progresses, so we start with relatively simple material and proceed to the more difficult. With the usual group (eight or ten a t most) two reports a week work out well; there is even a little time for questions. For larger groups, more meetings or shorter reports (or a different system altogether) would be necessary. The first function of any course in technical literature must be to introduce the student to some of the literature sources available to him. The course can also inform him of new developments-industrial, economic, or theoreticaland the current state of old ones. A related purpose is to help him fill in gaps in his fund of basic general information, such as the descriptive matter of inorganic chemistry. For this, textbooks are often better than periodicals. Another related purpose is to re-expose students to important concepts-for example, the basic merhansims of organic chemistry, ionic and radical. It is surprising hut true that many who seemed earlier to have a sound perception of these ideas find them quite novel on afresh encounter in the words of another student.
The oral reports provide valuable practice in public speaking. Such practice may seem superfluous; speech instruction is common enough nowadays. But direct instruction in this sort of skill is likely to he too formal and rather artificial. Unstimulated by the occasion, the student usually has nothing of his own to say. In the technical literature course he often finds real interest in what has to be said, and so has a genuine opportunity to say it well. The critical comments and questions of the student audience (only partially inhibited by the instructor's presence) are effective, though relatively gentle, initiation in the rigors of speech making. The instructor benefits in increased knowledge of his students. In some of them (often the slower ones) the broad stimulus of preparing reports on previously unknown subjects exposes an enormous capacity to assimilate and organize new information. The intellectual maturity thus revealed might otherwise have gone undetected; but with it they are clearly fit for opportunities which might have seemed too demanding. Since recognizing his students' potentialities aud aseisting their realization is the essence of a teacher's professional function, this knowledge is invaluable. A course of this sort automatically utilizes the teaching ability of the students involved (no mean asset, because sometimes they possess a great deal). Being students, they know what the real difficultiesare; also, other students tend to find their approach to familiar problems more palatable than what the old maestros
dish up. They can speak and he questioned informally, even rudely, in student idiom; and they won't be turned loose till they give satisfactory answers. Finally, they have the advantage of being new at the business. The syntheses and explanations they find may have eluded regular instructors not because they were unknown, hut because familiarity robbed them of the novelty which would have sharpened their meaning and made them worth imparting. If such a course in technical literature is more literary than technical, it is all the more valuable. Perhaps it would not be, in a liberal arts context; but in a technical college like Bradford Durfee, nothing else could quite take its place. The following short list is meant merely to indicate the type of reference material which can be used to advantage : (1) DAHLEN, M. A,, Ind. Eng. Chem., 31, 8 3 9 4 7 (1939). (2) MARK,H. F., Chem. Eng. News, 27, 138-42 (1949). ROBERTF., C h a . Eng. New& 33, 494-6 (3) MARSCHNER, (1955). (4) REYNOLDS, W. B.,Am. Dyestuff Reptr., 32, 455-6, 465-7 (1943). O., JR., Chem. Eng. News, 27, 3624-9 (5) ROBLIN,RICHARD (IU49) (6) SAMPEY, JOHNR., JR.,J. Am. C h a . Soe., 52,88-92 (1930). S. M., Chem. Rms., 49,91-lOl(1951). ( 7 ) SETHNA, L. C., Ind. Eng. Chem., 26,361-9 (1934). (8) STEWART, WILLIAM H., AND EDWINA. GEE, Chem. Eng. ( 9 ) WAGGAMAN, News, 26, 377-81 (1948). F. C., Chem. Eng. News, 26, 668-74 (1948). (10) WRITMORE, \----,-
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